Why I love the Design Community: My Guest Post
I run down 8 top points that make the design community a great place
Ahh yes, the Design Community. I love it! This is the topic of a recent guest post I wrote over at MyInkBlog. Below is an extract from the article, but you can read the full the article here. Please leave your feedback and comments on the actual post rather than here.
Why I love the Design Community & Industry
Choosing what career path you wish to take is one of the biggest decisions you will ever make in your life. And people take a lot of things into consideration when choosing their job, but did you ever stop and think about what the community around your job choice might be like, and how that could effect your choice.
Without doubt the Design community is one of the most unique industries to be a part of, what other profession would you see professionals going out of their way to make a tutorial of how to do something and make it public for all of their “competitors” to read and learn from. It’s a strange logic, but one that makes sense and ultimately creates a community and industry that is always moving forward and evolving together.
I’ve put together a list of my top 10 reasons why the design community is such an amazing and diverse place, and why I love being a part of it. *The links & examples I give are only there to support my points, and are not the main focus of the article.
01. Freebies
A word which a lot of people love to hear, it is something which you find a lot of in the design community. Giving something away for free to other designers to help them improve their own work and profession is rare in many other jobs. But in the design community designers love creating things for other designers and giving top quality products away for free.
Here are some of my top Freebie Picks:
Silk Icons
Function Icon Set (128 Free Icons)
Agregado: A Free WordPress Theme
30 Sites to Download Free Stock and Royalty Free Images
Tutorial9: Dirty Spray Brushes
02. Sharing Information & Knowledge
The design community is very geared towards making the industry and community better, this explains why it’s very easy to find yourself getting involved in the design community, and start learning some tricks of the trade in all aspects of the industry. There’s tutorials on all sorts, everything from finding clients & managing your work to creating big elaborate graphic design pieces and tutorials going into great detail on all aspects of web design & development. Being part of a community that is so willing to share tips tricks and information is quite a privilege, and while the information is out there it would be silly not to take advantage of it, there is always something you can pick up from any tutorial (even if the end result isn’t always mind-blowing)
Great examples to show what I mean:
Tutorial9
PSDTuts
PSDFan
VECTORTuts
Photoshop Star
All of these not only have a great focus on tutorial and education, but there is also a great community around them, providing feedback and allowing other people to share further tips and techniques. So for me, tutorial sites are quite an important part of the design community.
